How does one of the hottest social media tools grow to 70,000+ users in such short time?
Advertising? SEO? Taking a loudspeaker to the street and yelling at people? Black magic?
No, the real answer is good ol’ fashioned smart content marketing.
And today, you are going to get insights from the mind of the Buffer App’s content manager.
No more intro, let’s do this!
PS: You can follow Leo Widrich on Twitter @LeoWid.
1.) Glad to have the time to talk to you today Leo. Obviously the BufferApp is a solid product that has benefited from your content marketing & blogging efforts.
First things first: just a little background on you and the Buffer team: when did this all start? Why was the BufferApp decided on as a needed product? How has growth (users) and usage of the product been so far?
Thanks for having me today Greg.
Sure, so Buffer was founded by Joel about 1 year ago.
Joel built the first version of Buffer within 7 weeks and after only 3 days the first person started paying.
This was a fabulous validation and the first sign to push for more.
About a month later I got involved to help with the marketing of Buffer.
To do that, I actually dropped out of college and focused solely on Buffer from then onwards.
The key painpoint we are trying to solve is that it is very hard to consistently and at the right times share on social networks.
With Buffer, you can spend 10 minutes in the morning and for the rest of the day, don’t have to worry about your social streams.
It was been going great so far, we are at around 70.000 users and are seeing really strong growth!
Now on to your content marketing efforts.
“How do you believe your posts on the Buffer blog and your guest posts have effected your growth in users, and do you believe that all products need to utilize content marketing, even those built as well as the BufferApp?”
Absolutely, content marketing has been the most vital thing for us.
Actually up until the past 2 months, content marketing accounted for over 70% of our daily signups.
This is just a great way to provide value for readers, without full self-promotion.
If someone likes your content, they are most likely interested in finding out more about what else it is you do.
This is what I found to work really well.
Of course it is important to be smart and we gradually targeted larger and larger blogs for our guestposts so we could grow traffic accordingly.
Takeaway: Just to clarify, that bold section above was done by me, Leo is much more modest!
I really wanted to examine this part just as a friendly reminder for how powerful serious & smart content marketing is for real businesses and products.
People often see blogs and don’t take them seriously.
To be fair, these people are typically not in touch with any sort of marketing, let alone content marketing, and don’t understand how far the web has come.
As we’ve seen here, content marketing is real, and it’s really effective.
Over 70% of sign-ups up until the past 2 months for one of the hottest new social media tools out there, that’s some powerful stuff.
I’ve been reading Leo’s content for a while, and he is definitely an inspiration to me in that he is one of those guys that seems to be “everywhere”, or at least everywhere relevant to his offering/niche.
There is definitely something to be said for that.
When building something from the ground up, it’s best to be everywhere at once.
Then, as you start to get your name out there, you should begin to focus on the sites & marketing techniques that have really been working.
Say for instance, that Leo found through his guest blogging that certain blogs were working much better than others.
He would then focus on those blogs (as he said above, he’s been pursuing bigger blogs as time goes on) in the next stage in his content marketing efforts.
The first stage though?
Be everywhere.
Be all over your niche, don’t let it be possible for people to ignore you.
That means writing a ton of great posts, but luckily I asked Leo a few questions about that as well…
2.) What methods have you to be effective in content marketing? Specifically, I’d first like to ask you about content on your own blog (Buffer Blog).
What types of posts seem to perform well? When you are writing a post for your topic, what things do you keep in mind? What are some strategies you use for finding knockout post ideas?
There are a few types of posts that perform extraordinarily well.
One type of posts are data driven articles.
With this one for example, we could hit well above our normal retweet and traffic rate for our blog.
If you can aggregate or find any data driven insights, I highly recommend putting them on your blog as a post.
Secondly, I believe list posts perform particularly well.
7 Reasons Why.. or 10 Tips To.. help the reader to understand exactly what they can expect by simply reading the headline.
I also suggest to closely keep an eye on the top blogs in your niche to find inspiration for articles.
In my case this is browsing Mashable, Social Media Examiner and the like.
They produce top notch content and always keep me inspired to do the same.
Takeaway: Maybe I’m biased, but I loved Leo’s answer about data driven articles.
Here’s the thing: when you are new in your niche, why/how are people supposed to respect your opinion?
How can they be sure that what you are saying is “forreals”, and not just some mindless dribble that you’ve managed to sputter out convincingly?
I’ll tell you how.
Data.
It’s hard to argue with the facts, and people LOVE seeing data supporting arguments in posts much more so than you would believe.
Not to go off topic, but just check out You Are Not So Smart.
It’s a blog that pretty much posts about logical fallacies, nothing earth shattering to any college psychology students, but because it’s presented in a “bloggy” way (easily read), and because the author uses real research, it has become hugely popular in a very short amount of time (the author puts a lot of effort in each article though, just check out the lengths of those posts, I’m jealous ;)).
The thing is, I’m going to go ahead and just say it, I sincerely doubt that a majority of people really sit there and read these scientific papers.
They most likely just read the post.
So why add the data? Is the credibility that it adds to your post really that valuable?
Yes.
Readers just want to have some confirmation that what you are saying is worth their time.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you need to dig into research articles for your blog.
Just offer some sort of proof, and you won’t need a huge subscriber list to get people to believe what you are saying.
Are you going to offer some personal finance advice? Show people instances where it really worked.
Are you going to discuss something in personal development? Use real research (articles from places like the NYTimes will do) to show that the topic/strategy/method that you are talking about is really utilized in the real world (like I did on my post describing how to practice like an expert).
Now, this won’t apply to every blog out there, but adding that “professional” touch can really boost your image and credibility, especially if you are new on the scene.
Ever wonder why I am so big on interviews & actual data?
I had something to prove on this blog, so what better way to prove it than with people (and research) who can actually back up any advice that is given.
This same technique can work for your blog, and all it takes is to dig a little deeper into what you are writing about.
3.) Next I’d like to ask you about your posts on other blogs. You are obviously a guest blogging fiend, I’ve seen you everywhere! What are some guest post types that do well?
When guest posting for another blog, what things do you consider about the readers/audience and the blog itself in order to right a guest post that will be well received?
Not only does it build backlinks for you, you are also able to create great relationships.
Look at us two for example.
You have provided such amazing content for the Buffer blog, it is only natural for me to stay in touch and see how I can help with your projects.
For guestposting, I would suggest to always fill it with personal experiences, yet not too much self-promotion.
The more personalised the articles are, the more interest you can raise from the reader.
If you describe a tool, describe how it helped you specifically, if you explain techniques, give specific examples.
It’s also key to really understand what the blogger is writing about in order to get considered.
Therefore, I always read their posts religiously beforehand, commented and Tweeted them out.
You then internalize what they are all about and you can start an email conversation much easier.
Takeaway: Leo offers some great advice packed in a fairly small space here.
First, I have to highlight something in his post, where he discusses us as an example of the benefits of guest blogging.
One thing you might not have guessed: this blog’s biggest referring traffic source is Twitter.
Yes, of all those guest posts (3 on Problogger alone!), Twitter is sending the most traffic to this site.
You know why?
Leo.
Leo, through his own account and the BufferApp Twitter page, reguarly tweets (ahem, Buffers :)) my articles directly from my site.
In fact, through my best estimates, I’ve found that Leo’s tweets are not far behind the actual traffic I get sent from posting on the Buffer blog.
My point here is that guest blogging can have a bigger impact on your site than just a single guest post can tell, creating connections of people who support your content (and who link and tweet to you without being asked) is the real key to having a successful blog.
PS: Here’s my first email to the Buffer team!
That’s why building a “tribe” (least favorite buzzword) is so important, and why people harp on about email lists and really getting in touch with your readers (and why I have a contact page at the top of my site, and always will :)).
All of this started when I emailed Leo out of the blue, saying that I had a lot of info about Twitter, but nowhere to post it (since TwiTip is practically dead now).
I offered to send over a single guest post, and it brought it some decent traffic for the Buffer blog, and as you’ll remember from my latest update, things went from there and now I am going to regularly contribute for a while.
How to sum this up in a quick thought…
You should be writing almost as much in your email client as you should in your WordPress dashboard!
Maybe you’re an established blog and you can skip this step, but seriously, email anyone that you might be able to make a genuine connection with, or who you support.
You never know what might come of it.
4.) Lastly, I’d like to ask about your marketing efforts on social media, especially Twitter. Obviously the BufferApp makes things easier, but what are some ways in which you try to effectively tweet to give your content good exposure?
Is there a “right amount” of tweets to send out during a day? What ways do you try to make sure your tweets are read and shared?
One thing that we recently found out was that it is important to, ever so often, post value Tweets, that don’t contain links.
That can be a quote, insight or simply a “status update”. 1 per day of these, can really drive a lot of discussion and mix up your patterns.
I also suggest to always add a comment to your Tweets if it contains a link, saying who wrote the article or whom you are retweeting.
Doing so, you can build stronger ties with these people and really show your appreciation.
I don’t think there is a “right amount” of content, yet, more is always better if you can maintain the quality!
So, that means if you don’t go over 1-2 Tweets per hour. Personally, we are posting 10 top content Tweets every day, which seems to be a great amount.
Having said that, as people start out on Twitter, it might be better to stick to 2-5 great content Tweets, so you aren’t overwhelmed.
Great question!
I think “A/B testing” of Tweets is definitely something to play around with.
What I would try out here is to change the headline of the same article and tweet it out 2 or 3 times.
Then I normally go into our analytics via Buffer and see how well the two have performed and which headline was better.
Often it is crazy to see that some headlines do a lot better than others when testing this, some that you wouldn’t even have considered to do well.
I described more on this technique here.
Takeaway: Not surprisingly, Leo is very skilled at both proving value and creating conversations via social media, especially Twitter.
I love the idea of proving “value Tweets”, putting out short bits of information that isn’t looking for a click.
The thing is, these types of tweets can still get you exposure.
If you use quotes, info, and witty updates as your “value Tweets”, people will generally retweet them and you’ll get more exposure without using a link.
Onward, we see Leo obvious uses Buffer to send out his tweets.
Timing of tweets actually matters quite a bit, since updates on Twitter get buried so frequently.
The solution?
Tweriod tells you when your followers are online the most, and Buffer schedules your updates on pre-determined times (determined by you, that is).
Find out when your followers are online the most, and then tweet at those times.
You might be surprised at the difference that this makes.
Lastly, we come to the bane of many bloggers: testing.
I’ve talked about the importance of testing before in my best web analytics roundup, but it applies to social media as well.
If you didn’t think so before, Leo stated it above: it’s amazing the difference another type of headline can make on the same tweet.
If you aren’t familiar with Twitter, it’s regular practice to send the same tweet out multiple times (since as I said, updates get pushed down so fast).
Not in a row of course, but I’ve seen accounts tweet a new post over the course of 3-4 days.
The thing you should try: time it perfectly with Tweriod & Buffer, and mix up the headlines a bit.
See which ones get a lot of retweets and responses.
In the same way that headlines for you posts get people to read, the content of you tweet is what gets people to click.
Over To You
Have you been actively building relationships with your fellow bloggers and other influential people in your niche?
What do you think about this concept of “being everywhere” in blogging, is it really necessary?
PS: Two huge posts on creating a good looking blog for cheap (a few of you emailed me about this) and a post on clever email conversion techniques is coming up, stay tuned!
Thank you for reading!